


alinochka

by neonheartbeat



Category: Shadow and Bone (TV), The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alina Starkov is Still a Sun Summoner, Alternate Ending - Ruin and Rising, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Gen, Hate Sex, Jealousy, Light Bondage, Minor Mal Oretsev/Alina Starkov, The Author Regrets Nothing, Vomiting, Worship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:14:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29817897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonheartbeat/pseuds/neonheartbeat
Summary: The civil war is over. Ravka is ruled by King Nikolai, and with him, working to unite and not tear asunder, rule Sankta Alina of the Sun and the Starless Saint, who, it is said, has been fettered and bound to the will ofSol Koroleva-- yet, truth is often stranger than rumor...
Relationships: Nikolai Lantsov & Alina Starkov, The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova & Nikolai Lantsov, The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov
Comments: 33
Kudos: 120





	alinochka

**Author's Note:**

> look, I shotgunned all three of these books in a day and immediately said "lol no" to the ending of r&r so this fic is based on three extremely important central tenets:  
> 1) letting women fuck  
> 2) letting women do bad things  
> 3) letting women fuck bad guys and being into it
> 
> mind the tags and have fun, y'all!

_ Mal is dead. _

The shock of it sent ripples through my bones, my blood, my body: even as his last breath ebbed and unimaginable power flooded me, as my flesh rippled with light. The volcra were howling, gibbering— I barely heard them over the consuming heat, the boiling air. 

_ I am the Sun Summoner. I am the Sun itself.  _

The world was shaking, the power in me enough to rend peaks from mountains, tear life away, burn away all shadow.

_ Shadow. Light. Like calls to like.  _

“ _ NO!”  _ I turned, searching for the source of the scream of furious agony. The Darkling was behind me, cringing away, his hands up to shield his face from me. I raised a palm and called the light— it struck him in the chest, tumbled him to the ground as if he was nothing. He stayed where he had fallen, face-down in the trampled mud like so many of the fallen Grisha that littered the field, so many of the First Army...

_ Mal is dead.  _

And what had I bought with his life? I raised my hands and reached for the shadows of the Fold above, and as if they were nothing— nothing but a blanket, to be peeled back, swept away. The darkness retreated, the sky above shining down in patches that grew wider and wider as my light burned through the shadows. 

Mal was dead, and the sacrifice had worked. Grief choked me, and I wished as I stood there on the grass, my hands uplifted and brilliant light beaming out of every pore in my skin, that I could faint away like the first time, lose myself to unconsciousness, just so that I could hold off the pain of loss for a time. But that had been a gift given to Alina Starkov, an orphaned nobody. It would not be a mercy granted to Sankta Alina, the Sun Summoner. 

The volcra began to wither and vanish, wailing as light pierced them. Below the wispy clouds, men were crying, pointing up: throwing their weapons down. Some were on their knees, praying to all the saints. I distantly hoped that they were not praying to me. My work done, I dropped my hands and stumbled slightly to the right as my feet hit the ground. I had not been aware I had been hovering, the sheer force of my power lifting me a few inches up. Tolya and Tamar were rushing to me, Zoya behind them. The  _ nichevo’ya _ were still swooping around: so the Darkling was not dead.

“We have to—” began Tamar, her golden eyes wide in terror as she gestured at the winged things swooping down on the soldiers, on the other Grisha.

“What, kill him?” I asked in a voice that felt ragged, torn with exhaustion. My eyes trailed over Mal, who lay on the ground with peace on his bloody face, his hair ruffling in the wind— as if he still lived. As if he was only sleeping. I wanted to kill the Darkling, too: wanted vengeance, wanted to crush his face with the sole of my boot. But killing him wouldn’t bring back Mal, nor would it make me feel any better. I knew that now, as I looked at where he lay on the ground, and I knew what I had to do with heavy certainty. “No. I—”

The Darkling jerked to his feet, gasping, and found me with bleary gray eyes. “You,” he said, stumbling forward. “No.  _ No. _ ” There was shock in his voice, and rage, and loss, and I only felt pity for him. All his grand plans to keep Grisha safe, all that work of centuries, had been burned away like mist in the morning— and it was my fault. He crouched, shadows springing from his hands as a wild light burned in those eyes. “ _ Undo it!” _

I raised my hands. “No,” I said quietly, and he checked himself, eyes boring into mine. “You’ll never command me again.”

“Alina,” he breathed, his hands clenched into fists.

“Get rid of your  _ nichevo’ya. _ Do it.”

His face twisted in fury. “You think you can command  _ me? _ ”

I reached into my sleeve, seizing the knife I had used to kill Mal, and held it to my own throat as Zoya shrieked and Tolya shouted in fear. Ignoring them, I continued. “Do it, or I die by my own hand.” The Darkling froze. I could almost see his mind working behind those cool gray eyes: I was meant to be his equal. He and I were entwined by a thousand threads, light and dark, each other’s balance: to lose me would leave him truly alone in the world. I pressed the knife harder, just above the collar of antler I wore, and blood trickled down my throat. He made a sharp, aborted movement toward me. “Kill them, Aleksander. Now.” I hoped my eyes were as burning as his: what did he want more? 

A world of shadow protecting his Grisha? Or me?

_ Choose, _ I thought silently.  _ I am not a patient saint. _

He lifted his own hands. The  _ nichevo’ya _ landed, squealed, fell on their sides, and wailed as the darkness enveloping them, changing them, drained away, back into the Darkling’s fingertips. “So you’ve discovered how to play,” he said, cold fury tinging every syllable. “Very good, Sankta Alina.”

An idea was forming in my mind: what would happen if an amplifier wore an amplifier? He could not harness my power, but I could harness his. I had killed the sea whip, hadn’t I? 

Just as I had killed Mal. 

There would be no loophole of mercy for the Darkling to wiggle through.

“Zoya,” I said tightly, and she appeared at my elbow. “Take this knife. I want you to make an amplifier for the Darkling.”

It was a credit to her loyalty that she didn’t even question me. “Out of…?” she prompted, voice trembling slightly.

I swallowed. I would not force her to rip Mal’s bones from his body, to butcher him like the stag had been butchered, mutilated for me. She had taken him to her bed once, and I had forgotten.  _ I am not cruel like you, _ I thought, staring at the Darkling. “His hair,” I finally said. 

“Yes, of course,” said Zoya, taking the Grisha steel from me. The Darkling started, as if jolted from a nightmare. 

“No,” he said, furious. “ _ No,  _ I did what you asked of me, I—”

“I don’t care,” I said coldly, advancing on him as Zoya worked behind us. “You murdered people I loved, people I cared about. All because you wanted me at your side, wanted my power. You got your wish. But you get it on  _ my _ terms. Not yours.”

His handsome mouth twisted in a snarl and his hands came together. Thunder rolled, but I had been expecting this: I burned through his darkness as easily as breathing, and it brought him to his knees as Zoya brought me the amplifier. 

A fetter, exactly like my scales. 

A fetter for his wrist, to mirror mine. 

“Give me your hand,” I ordered, and he gave it, something unnamable shining in those eyes of his. I clamped it down on his skin, by the sleeve of his kefta, and called to the light between all spaces, smaller than grains of sand, to seal it shut. “It’s done,” I said, and gripped him by the chin, forcing him to look up at me. 

A shuddering, living power coursed through me, shadow wrestling with light, and I raised my other hand, scorching away the remnants of the Fold, letting sunlight pour down on our heads. The volcra all vanished in gusts of glimmering light. In my hand, the Darkling was trembling, his eyes rolling back, helpless and at my mercy. I let him go after a moment, only pity in my heart as I watched him scrabble at the dirt. “We forgot the most central tenet of the Small Science, Aleksander,” I said as he regained himself. “Like calls to like. Light cannot be light without shadow, and shadow cannot be dark without light to compare it by.”

“Alina,” he said, shoulders sagging. 

“But I can see it now. You’re my foil. As I am yours.”

Tears gleamed in his eyes, like diamonds in the sunlight. “You won’t let me be alone,” he whispered, so softly that I was the only one to hear.

“Never,” I said coldly, and turned my back on his kneeling form.

  
  


**~ FIVE YEARS LATER ~**

  
  


Of course, I think idly as I trail my fingers along the frame of the new painting that had been commissioned in honor of the fifth anniversary of the destruction of the Fold, one had to accept there were certain things as a Saint one would have to get used to. One was the mythologizing of your whole life, untrue and true all muddled together. Another was looking at paintings like this. On the huge canvas, I’m shown floating above the ground, light streaming from a halo around my head and from my hands and eyes as the curling back shadows above me vanished. At my feet, kneeling, is the Darkling. It’s a good likeness, even if the artist had taken some liberties with me— I definitely don’t have a figure that buxom, or skin that smooth. And I hadn’t been wearing a black kefta on the field— had I? I don’t think I had. 

“My lady,” pipes up a voice to my left. I turn, smiling, at Misha. He had somehow grown two feet in the last five years, and as a twelve year old, his voice kept cracking at the worst moments. He bows politely. “They want you in the War Room.”

“The Shu Han ambassadors again?” I ask, making my way over to the doors.

“No, the Fjerdian delegation.” He scurries along behind me like a quick little puppy. 

“Oh, the ones who want to compromise over their customs of killing Grisha,” I mumble under my breath, and Misha opens the door for me as I raise my head and serenely enter just like Genya had drilled into me: head up, chin even, shoulders back. 

“ _ Sol Koroleva!” _ he announces, his voice crackling just a tiny bit on the last syllable. The door shuts behind me and I walk to my place: the ivory-carved chair sitting to the right of the ebony one at the War Table. The Fjerdian ambassadors rise and touch their foreheads in a show of respect, but the Darkling doesn’t move.

Because of course he’s already there, his black-gloved hands resting tightly on the arms of the chair. His black kefta gleams in the light above, and his gray eyes follow me almost idly as he speaks to the Fjerdians. “Unfortunately, we cannot promise Fjerda any reports of escaped Fjerdian Grisha that seek sanctuary in Os Alta.”

I silently groan. Not more of this again. “Or indeed any who seek sanctuary in all of Ravka, esteemed ambassadors,” I add, sitting down. My gold and white ketfa gets stuck under my leg, and I fight the urge to extract it. I have to look unflappable. Saints and Sun Queens don’t get to be human. “We told the Shu Han delegation the same.”

“King Nikolai—” begins one older man, looking very red.

“The King is of one mind with us, as we are with him. He respects and honors Grisha and their skills, and it is his greatest wish that all should learn to do as he does,” I say tightly. 

“The Sun Queen is right,” adds the Darkling. “If you insist on persecution of the Grisha in your land, they may seek refuge here, and they will be protected.” His hand, the one nearest mine, twitches toward my little finger, but the moment passes, and nobody notices it but me. I pretend I’ve seen nothing, and remain in my seat until the Fjerdians, disgruntled, leave. 

When the massive doors shut and we’re alone, he turns toward me. “You haven’t said anything about my new face,” he mutters, like a petulant little boy. 

“You have a new one? I hadn’t noticed.” That’s not true, but I’m not going to surrender a single inch. I lift my thigh and yank the fold of silk out from underneath. “Saints, I’m going to have a crease on my skin. Ouch.”

The Darkling crinkles his nose. “You didn’t notice?”

“I mean I’ve had other things on my mind than what you look like for the past week,” I snap. “Two separate delegations from two different countries and both of them are threatening to cut off trade to Ravka unless we hand over a quota of Grisha a year? People’s lives are at stake here, and all you care about is how you  _ look.” _

“Nobody’s going to touch the Grisha,” he says in a low, quick monotone, eyes blazing. “Nobody. Not under my protection. If you’d just let me work the Fold to block the—”

“Oh, shut  _ up, _ ” I demand, and stand up. He rises with me, and I whirl away from him. “The Fold would have cut off all the other Grisha in Shu Han and in Fjerda and you know it. You’d have been abandoning them.”

“I could have saved them,” he insists.

“Not without me.”

There’s a long pause, like a breath between spaces. “No. Not without you,” admits the Darkling, and I can see that his fingers are trailing lightly over his fetter: the cuff Zoya forged from Grisha steel and set a twisting lock of Mal’s hair in. I can see the fine brown strands, their golden glint in the light from the windows, and it steals the breath from my lungs just as it has every time I allow myself to look at it. 

_ This is what you bought with his life. Was it worth it? Is anything worth a life? _

Five years of co-ruling we have behind us, in a strange sort of triumvirate: myself, the Darkling, and Nikolai, found and whole again save for his scarred hands. The Sun Queen, the King of Shadows, and the King of Scars, the people of Ravka call us— or the King, the Saint, and the Devil. “It sounds like a pack of playing cards,” Nikolai had grumbled to me one night in the dining room, and I had laughed. 

“We’ll make a great illustration in th—” I had begun, only to see the Darkling slipping past the door, eyeing me with some wounded, angry expression. He’s like that often now: moody, snappish, pushing my buttons, snapping at servants— all just, it seems, for the fun of it. Anyone else might have already wept or shouted at him, kicked him, shoved him over the wall of the palace and into the river— but I am older, now, and I can see things more clearly, and not always react without thinking first. 

Besides that, I have seen how lonely children had often behaved when brought to a place they could suddenly call  _ home: _ how they kicked, bit, screamed, threw things. As if they were daring their caregivers to abandon them again, to shut them out:  _ see, I knew you didn’t care about me after all.  _

Yes. I know about that. I turn to face the Darkling, my chin even and held high. “Let me see your new face, then,” I say gently, and he looks up with surprise, as if he hadn’t expected me to say that. He stands, walking to me, and now I can see his face. Where before it had been smooth, unnaturally boyish, with thick hair black as night and those cool gray eyes, I can see lines now at the corners of his eyes— a few silvery threads to mark his temples, the hints of dark circles beneath his eyes. His nose is less sharp, and there’s faint black stubble shading his jaw and upper lip. “Why this face?” I ask.

“Genya thought it would be a good idea to… allow myself to age. Slightly.” He shifts his weight. “To make people feel more at ease with me.”

“It looks good,” I find myself saying, and a flicker of astonishment crosses his face. “No, it does. You look like a man, not like a boy.”

The Darkling snorts, a note of incredulity in his voice. “Whereas you don’t seem to have aged a day in five years.”

“I don’t know. I think I might have found a few gray hairs.”

His eyes flicker to the white locks curling around my shoulders, tangled in Morozova’s antlers, and he actually laughs outright. When he does, his whole face transforms into something completely different: he looks… but then it’s gone, a shutter slamming down over his humor like a cloud over a sunny day. “I’ve made myself less Grisha for Ravka’s sake. You could stand to do the same.”

I blink, slightly hurt. “Aleksan—”

“ _ Don’t, _ ” he hisses, whirling on me in a storm of black. “Don’t call me that. Don’t you throw it in my face, not something I gave you in a moment of weakness.”

“It wasn’t weakness, it was trust.”

“And look where trust got me,” he snarls, raising his left hand. “Chained and bound to the Sun Summoner, who wears  _ two _ amplifiers. Nothing but a slave.”

I take a step toward him, unable to keep the anger from my voice. “I thought this was what you wanted. Me at your side. Ruling together.”

“Not like this,” he says, bristling.

I narrow my eyes. “Very well. I’ll go find Zoya, ask her to poison me. Surely you won’t have any objection to—”

“ _ No,” _ he spits in a very different tone, hands clenched into hard fists at his side. 

“All Saints,” I curse, leaning against the War Room table. “So you don’t want to be at my side, ruling. You don’t want to rule without me. What do you want?”

“You’re mocking me,” he says through a mouth that hardly moves. “You know what I want.”

I do know. I’m not feeling inclined to give it to him. “Five years of this. For the first year you wouldn’t even come out of your rooms. I had to handle half the war cleanup effort by myself because you were  _ brooding. _ ”

“I liked you better when you didn’t nag so much.”

“I liked you better when I thought you were  _ good _ .”

The Darkling charges me, pins me against the edge of the table, his hands like iron. “It must be killing you,” he breathes into my ear, “that your precious Mal and I are entwined for eternity. You can’t look at me without thinking about him, and you can’t remember him without thinking about me. How poetic.”

“You can try all you like to needle me. It won’t work.” I’m better at controlling myself now: my throat is tight, but my voice is even. “Maybe you should just ask me for what you really want.”

The Darkling makes a noise in his throat like a low snarl. “And be denied? Scorned? Haven’t I suffered enough humiliation at your hands already?” His mouth is drifting closer to my skin, and there’s a tremor to his voice I don’t recognize. “My foil. My equal. My terrible little  _ Sol Koroleva. _ ”

“Just ask, then,” I whisper, hating my treacherous heart for beating harder at his closeness. He smells of silk, of leather and wood and musk; of something ancient, and animal, and dark. 

“I asked if I could come to your rooms once,” he says softly, his warm breath gusting along my jaw. “You remember.”

“I do. A clever trick, to get me to trust you. But I’m not a foolish girl anymore, easily swayed by a few kisses.”

“It wasn’t—” He bites off his words and makes an angry little sound in his throat. “Grigori’s bones, Alina. If all the Grisha guarded what’s between their legs like you guard yours, there’d be none of us left after a hundred years.”

I slap him across the face. He’s not expecting it, and he has to catch himself against the edge of the table to avoid hitting his head. “Don’t you dare talk like that to me,” I snarl.

The Darkling’s eyes glitter. He knows he’s hit a sore spot, and now he’ll press. “Am I wrong, then?  _ Are _ you tumbling the King behind all our backs? Can we expect a pretty little bastard for Nikolai someday soon? Not sure how you’ll put him on the throne, if he’s got white hair, though—”

Oh, thank all the Saints, he’s not bringing up Mal. I can handle this. “You know, I think your problem is you forgot after about three hundred years that you actually owned a cock,” I say coolly, and the Darkling’s eyes go wide with outrage. “Don’t be jealous. It’s very unattractive.”

“Unattra— why don’t you ask  _ Zoya _ how attractive she finds me?” he snarls, bristling.

I fight the urge to laugh. “Zoya’s been so busy with her work in the Fabrikating rooms she barely has time to sleep. If she’s finding time or energy to tumble you, I’d like to know how. Maybe she can teach me the secret so I can squeeze in more meetings.”

“You’re not— with Nikolai, then,” says the Darkling, staring at me. 

His jealousy becomes more and more transparent every passing month, I swear. “I’m friends with him. He likes me. He proposed a long time ago, during the war, but we’re past that, and I’ve been encouraging him to marry someone for a political alliance—”

“How very mature of you.”

I can feel my eye twitching. “One of us should be. You’d think it would be the centuries-old Grisha, but no, it’s got to be me, it seems.”

“You know what’s happened since the war?” he asks, hovering two feet from me. “You’ve finally left childhood in the past, where it belongs.”

“Yes,” I say with some difficulty. “Yes. That little girl wanted to marry Malyen Oretsev and live a simple life, a life without politics, or responsibilities. But she learned on the field of battle that you can’t turn you back on who you are just because you want to shut your eyes to your duty. And I am learning every day that it’s almost impossible to do my duty when I’m bound to a childish, stubborn, jealous idiot who sulks when I don’t pay every bit of spare attention I have to him. Good day.” And then, I turn on my heel and storm out of the War Room, leaving the Darkling, for once, speechless behind me.

*** * ***

Right after the war, my dreams had been nightmares. Mal’s face had appeared in most of them, bloody and sighing, or bound in chains: the Darkling screamed, the shadows rolled in, and I would be suffocating in the dark until Genya or Zoya or Tamar woke me with comforting words and a lamp to leave by my bed. I haven’t had those dreams in some time. Not since the previous winter, anyway, not for months. 

This night, however, not even the summer heat drifting through the windows that I fell asleep in can wake me up. Mal is drowning in blood, everyone I know is turning into winged creatures with fangs, Ana Kuya is spinning from a tree, the Darkling is slowly melting away into the shadows, and my feet are trapped beneath the sucking ground. I am suffocating, I am dying, the sun can’t shine below the ground— I can’t go back to the caves—

“Alina.”

I jerk awake at the feeling of the hands shaking me, and struggle to disentangle myself from the silk bedsheets. “No,  _ no, _ get— the ground off me, I can’t breathe—”

“Alina. It was a dream. You’re in the Little Palace.” A lamp lights, and I see a face cast half into shadow, half into light as the lamp is set on the table by my bed. It’s the Darkling, and all I can feel is relief that it was only a nightmare. None of it is real. Tears stream down my face as I clutch the sheets in my hands, shuddering. “The war’s over,” he continues in the gentlest tones I’ve ever heard him use. How did he know I was dreaming about the war? Had I been crying out in my sleep? “You’re safe.”

When I can catch my breath, I find his eyes. “Was I talking?” I ask.

He hesitates for the briefest moment, then nods. The moon shines down through my open window, lighting him in silver: the black bedrobe he wears is open at the throat, exposing several inches of pale skin. “You were screaming his name. And… mine.”

“Yours,” I echo.

“Yes. It’s why I came. I thought—” His voice trails off, unsure. “I thought you needed me.”

_ I don’t need you, _ I want to snap, to prickle like he had done to me. But that isn’t true. I need him like he needs me. Like shadow needs light to cast it: like light needs shadow to define it. “Thank you for waking me up,” I whisper. “You didn’t wake anyone, did you?”

“No. Your guard is still sound asleep. I got in through the other door.” He gestures at the connecting door that separates our bedchambers. Normally, I keep it locked, and I look at him quizzically. He has the decency to look a little embarrassed. “I had to break the lock. I’ll fix it.”

“Thanks,” I mutter. My silk nightgown is stuck to my body with sweat, and I look down, suddenly very aware of how much, exactly, is on display in the moonlight. My hands yank the sheet up to cover my chest. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

He remains where he is. “I should not have mocked you today,” he returns, and that’s new: I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard him say he was wrong about anything in his very long life. “I’m sure it didn’t help with… this.” One pale hand gestures at the bed, at me; at my dreams. Those eyes, gray as starlight, drift across me, and once again I’m reminded that he’s centuries old. 

“Yeah, well, you murdering my teachers during the war didn’t really help, either,” I reply, staring right back at him. 

The Darkling sighs. “Death is a part of life, Alina. Botkin died with honor, and so did your Ana Kuya, in her own way. Your grief will pass. Does that bring you comfort?”

Tears prick the corners of my eyes. “No. You killed them.”

A humorless little laugh floats over my bed. “If you mean to wail about the blood on my hands, you’ll have to do more than that to shame me. I’ve killed thousands. Call me a murderer if you like. But don’t pretend you haven’t killed, too.”

That twists my heart more than anything else he could have said. “I killed to stop  _ you—” _

“You killed to achieve a goal. Just like me.”

“I’m nothing like you,” I grind out between my teeth.

He tilts his head, observing me. “No? You would like to think so. And yet you are very like me. How interesting. Do you remember how afraid you were that I would make you a monster?”

“Yes,” I tell him. 

“You still fear it.”

“No. I know I’ll never murder innocents. I’ll never—”

“I thought that too,” he says softly. “In the beginning. You’ll find that eternity tends to blur the lines… and you will come to know that to keep your people safe as a leader, that there’s no  _ never _ when it comes to protecting the ones you love. There’s nothing you won’t be capable of doing. You’ve already killed your darling Malyen. His life was the price to stop me, the war. Was he not innocent, Alina?”

A chill runs up my spine. “You’re not capable of love,” I spit between my teeth. “You don’t understand it. You—”

Like a snake, the Darkling snatches my wrists and crowds me against my pillows, leaning in close. “You know I am,” he snarls. “You  _ felt _ my grief when my mother died. If I could not love her, then I would have felt nothing.”

The touch of his skin on mine is pure exhilaration, lightning pulled from the sky, everything within me wanting it against all reason. I tamp it down as best I can. The antler collar is digging into my neck. “And yet I manage to not taunt you about your mother’s death, while you goad me over Mal’s. Tell me again how we’re the same, Aleksander.”

His breath leaves him, and his fingers loosen on my wrists and fall away nerveless. I push him off my bed and roll over, staring at the wall. After a long moment, I hear him walk away, the door closing behind him, and I close my eyes in a vain attempt to hold the tears in.

*** * ***

It’s a week after my nightmare when the Darkling speaks to me again, or actually even sees me again— he locks himself in his rooms for seven whole days while I’m once again left to handle diplomacy with Nikolai. Genya whispers to me four days in that when the Darkling heard from Zoya that I was having dinner with the King, he went into a rage and destroyed half his bedroom: the Fabrikators are working overtime to try to repair the damage. I can’t help but feel vindictively pleased at inciting his anger.  _ Who does he think he is? I can eat with who I please. _

Someone else started spreading a rumor that he’s isolated himself for prayers and fasting, which is about the least believable thing I can imagine the Darkling doing, but everyone else in the Little Palace seems to take it at face value. So I go along with it: I answer all inquiries about his whereabouts with a placid expression, telling them all he’s deep in prayer and contemplation, I help shape a few new policies that are supposed to help refugees from Shu Han, and I sign off on designs for another few commemorative memorials between beginning the long process of helping Nikolai receive merchants from Os Kervo and Novokribirsk, Novyi Zem and Kerch. Trade is booming with the Shadow Fold destroyed, and the treasuries are filling quickly. Yet, I feel heavy and hopeless, as if something is missing somewhere deep within me.  _ Mal, _ I tell myself, but I know in my deepest heart it isn’t Mal. My friend, my sweetheart. No, it is not him. I stand at windows and ponder over the idea of eternity: who will I be hundreds of years from now? Will I even know who I am anymore? 

Seven days past the dream, and Nikolai and I are standing in the small council room, going over potential brides again: it’s a constant battle at this point. I’m pushing for him to marry a Shu Han princess, Ehri Kir-Taban, but he’s angling toward an alliance with Novyi Zem, saying it’ll be a better choice since we have trade routes open again, and pointing out that having  _ jurda _ more freely available as a result will be good for the economy. He’s waxing poetic about taxes when the far doors crash open and we both jump, startled, as the Darkling storms in.

Hair stands up on the back of my neck as he makes his way to the table we’re standing at with an almost deranged look in his reddened eyes. “Talking weddings, I see,” he snarls, throwing himself down into a chair. “Go on. Don’t let  _ me _ stop you.”

Nikolai looks at me, then at him. “Good… afternoon,” he manages, looking extremely bemused. “Uh… anyway, as I was saying, I think if we taxed imports of  _ jurda _ by five percent higher, that would easily put plenty of profit into the treasury—and I like your idea of using the proceeds to fund orphan’s homes, Alina, so—”

“Oh, how touching. Orphan’s homes. As if the house of Lantsov has ever cared about anything but its own power and wealth,” sneers the Darkling, leaning back in his seat and spreading his knees. I hadn’t noticed, but his black kefta is stained and dull along the hem and cuffs, as if he hasn’t changed out of it in days. 

“Fortunately, I’m a bastard, so,” said Nikolai, taking the insult in stride. 

“I still think an alliance with the Shu is a better idea,” I press on, trying to ignore the Darkling’s eyes, fixed on me. “The Kir-Taban princess is very popular with her people, and her sister, the Queen, isn’t. If we have Ehri, there’s a way to protect the Grisha in Shu Han. I mean, who’s to say there won’t be a civil war down the line? Ehri could hold the throne in her own right, and Ravka and Shu Han would be united by marriage.”

“Aren’t you clever,” says the Darkling, contempt dripping from every word. “Civil war? Finally not afraid to get your hands dirty, Sankta Alina?”

“You know,” I say absently, looking at maps and lists, “if you had any balls, you’d have staged a coup here centuries ago and just taken what you wanted.”

He sits forward, eyes bleary as he focuses on me. “What, without a Sun Summoner? I’m not suicidal.”

“Are you drunk?” asks Nikolai, eyebrow raised. “I mean, I can barely get through some of these diplomatic dinners without  _ kvas, _ but it’s barely one in the afternoon.”

“Don’t talk to me,” snaps the Darkling without even looking at him. 

“Nikolai, I gave you your ring back, didn’t I?” I ask, pretending to think very hard. 

He catches on. “Oh, right. The emerald one? I have it put away, don’t worry.”

The Darkling looks like smoke is about to pour out of his ears. “Good,” I say blithely. “You’ll need it. Hopefully this’ll be a more successful proposal than I was.” Nikolai laughs, I smile back at him, and the Darkling’s final tether on sanity snaps. He launches himself out of his seat toward the King of Ravka, darkness bleeding in through the windows and walls. All I have to do is reach out and touch the back of his neck, calling away the shadows: his power ebbs, he comes up short, and he’s stuck there, shaking in impotent rage. “Behave,” I say. Nikolai hasn’t even moved; he’s just sitting there looking through papers, as if he didn’t just come close to being murdered where he sat by the Starless Saint.

“Let  _ go _ of me.”

“You reek.” I sniff. The Darkling smells like  _ kvas _ and sweat, as if he hasn’t bathed in some time. “Do I have to march you into your own bathroom and scrub you down?”

“Maybe,” he snarls stubbornly.

“I’m not your nursemaid.”

Nikolai pipes up from the table, stacking papers. “Anyway, I think I’m about done here. Thank you, Alina. Your input is, as always, invaluable.”

I roll my eyes, and once Nikolai’s gone through the door leading back to the throne room I march the Darkling over to the door that goes to the outer hall, back to the Little Palace. Keeping a firm grip on his ear is hard, because he won’t stop twisting around and hissing like a snake, but I manage it just fine. “You  _ are _ drunk,” I snap, pulling him along to his chambers. Fabrikators scatter as I walk him in and slam the door behind me, pushing him to the floor. “You can’t even be bothered to show up for a week to  _ anything _ —”

He manages to stand up, swaying slightly as he fixes me with a baleful glare. “Haven’t you heard? I was praying.”

“Praying.” I cross my arms. “What saint could  _ you _ possibly pray to other than yourself?”

Really, he looks like he’s about to collapse. “Sankta Maradi. Or maybe Vasilka. They all blur together after too much  _ kvas, _ don’t they?”

He must be drunker than I thought. What could the patron saints of unwed women and star-crossed lovers possibly give to him? “Get into the bath.”

“Make me,” he slurs, and then he gets copiously sick on the fine velvet carpet while I close my eyes and silently pray to every saint I know for patience. When he’s finished, I lift him up by the arm and direct him to the bathroom, where the beaten copper tub is waiting, empty. I twist the spout’s handle and it begins to fill with steaming hot water. “Going to undress me?” he asks, sounding hoarse, but less inebriated.

“No. Do that yourself. I have to call someone to clean the carpet.”

“I’ll do it,” he says irritably, and starts to fumble with the clasps of his kefta, shucking off the fine black silk. Beneath, his long white shirt is stained and rumpled. He unties his sash and drops it, then sits to tug off his boots. “You can go if you want to,” he says, barefoot and half-dressed, glaring at me with a black expression.

“You might slip and drown in the tub. I’ll stay.”

His left eye twitches. “How kind.” Off come the trousers and the stinking shirt, and there he is, bare as a peasant child in the lake except for the steel fetter around his wrist. I can’t help but catch a glimpse of black-bruised knees before he climbs into the tub, sinking up to his neck. “Are you going to scrub my back, too?”

I decide to answer bitterness with kindness. Maybe I’ll get somewhere. “What happened to your knees?”

“I told you. I was praying.” The venom’s left his voice: he’s quiet and soaking. “The priests say penance is good for clarifying the soul. If I even have a soul. I don’t think I do anymore.”

I shake my head, sighing. “Everyone has a soul. Even the Starless Saint.”

“How kind of you.” He dips below the surface and comes up, black hair slicked to his head, wet strands plastered to his forehead, before he presses his hands together in a mockery of prayer. “Sankta Alina, all mercy upon her, she who gives the soulless hope. Oh, holy Alina, with hair like moonlight, I pray—”

“I’ll wash your hair for you if you promise to shut up,” I tell him, half irritated and half amused.  _ Hair like moonlight? _ “Loquacious Sankt Aleksander, starless and dark, most annoying of all saints, may you shut your mouth quickly else you find soap in it.”

His eyes find mine, something like shock and surprise in it. “Say that again.”

I pause, reaching for the soap. “Say what?”

“What you called me.” There’s no escaping those intent, pale gray eyes.

“Sankt Aleksander?”

“That. Yes.” He hesitates, watching me as I dip the soap into the water. “If I asked you not to call me that in front of anyone else… would you obey?”

“People already call you the Starless Saint. Everyone but Nikolai’s too afraid to speak your real—”

“That’s not what I meant.” He looks away, his mouth pressed into a tight line, as I rub the soap into his greasy hair and work it to a lavender-scented lather. “Never mind it.”

“All right. I won’t. Rinse.” I take my soapy hands away and he pours a dipper over his head, washing away the soap in his hair. The light glints off his left wrist, and it doesn’t wound my heart quite as much as it once did. I touch my own collar absentmindedly, the smooth bone of the antlers resting on my shoulders, a reminder forever that mercy was more powerful than death.  _ Bound to each other. Light and dark.  _ The pale curve of his shoulder rises from the water, his arms moving to wash himself, and I just watch. He’s built well: tall, muscled, lithe. The hair thatched beneath his arms is black, and as he finishes washing and stands up out of the tub, I can see that the water running off his body tracks silver through more black hair below his navel, sparsely leading down to— 

Well, it isn’t as if I haven’t seen one of  _ these  _ before. I’m a grown woman, and I was in the army by the time I was seventeen, but even so I still fight a flush that rushes to my face as he steps out of the tub and finds a linen towel to rub his hair dry. His cock is heavy, flushed from the heat of the water, and hanging thick and full between his legs from a patch of black hair that surely can’t be as soft as it looks. He knows I’m looking, and positions himself slightly to the front, one leg back and one forward to give me a better view— he’s  _ preening, _ the vain idiot. I look up, and to my surprise his cheeks are pink, his eyelids half-closed— he’s basking in this. Reveling in my attention, given fully, bent on him: I realize I could ask him to do anything at that moment and he would do it. 

“Aleksander,” I say.

His face turns to mine before his eyes do, like a flower seeking the sun. “Alina,” he replies, voice gone slightly lower than usual. 

Do I dare ask? “Tell me what you want.”

The Darkling breathes in softly through his nose, eyes finding mine. The sun is shining down on him, making him look carved of ivory, making his gray eyes look almost blue. “I want you,” he says quietly. “To crawl at your feet, Alina. To worship you, and you alone. I want a power to share with you, a power that isn’t Small Science or  _ merzost _ . My equal. My— I’ve waited for you all this time, Alina. Hoping I wouldn’t be alone. Waiting and waiting. And now you are here at last, yet you still hate me, and threaten to leave me in the world. I will not tolerate a world without you. I know I am selfish, and terrible and cruel and spiteful. But I will be yours, if you would try to have me. Or don’t: don’t try to have me. Curse me to my face, banish me from your rooms, don’t even look at me at council meetings. But just don’t leave me. You promised me. Keep your promise. Don’t leave me alone.”

My heart pounds so hard that I’m afraid he’ll hear it. “Get on your knees, then,” I say softly, and his eyes widen only fractionally before he drops to his knees, barely minding the bruises. “Crawl over here. Crawl to me.”He crawls, on his hands and knees, his head raised and staring at me as he makes it to my feet, then sits back on his haunches, waiting. Still damp from the bath, his hair hangs in locks, black and thick, over his brow, his cool gray eyes gazing up at me. My head spins: what am I to ask for now?  _ You’re the Sun Queen, you can ask him for anything, _ says my head, and I extend my hand, knuckles up, as if he is a dog. “Kiss my hand,” I breathe.

He tilts his chin up and presses a kiss to my knuckles with lips that are soft and warm, careful and tentative. When I don’t stop him or push him away, he keeps kissing my hand: every finger, the underside of my palm, my bare wrist, my thumb. His touch on mine is, as always, a heady rush of power that threatens to drown me. “Alina,” he murmurs, voice thick. His breath is hot on my skin. “Alina.”

My ignorant body is responding to his kisses. It doesn’t know, like my head, that this is a man who killed, a man who is wicked, a liar with a stained black heart: heat is pooling like summer sunshine between my thighs, and I make a small sound of mingled discomfort and desperation as the Darkling’s tongue laps out between my index and middle fingers. “If I told you,” I whisper, trying my best to control my voice, “if I said—you couldn’t come to my room. That I didn’t want you in my bed. What would you— do to me?”

He looks up at me, his cheek pressed to my hand as if he can’t get enough of the touch of my skin. “I’m not going to force you,” he says quietly. “I want you willing, or not at all.” Well,  _ he’s _ already willing, and ready, I can see with intense embarrassment: he’s as hard as Grisha steel between his thighs, his eyes bright and his mouth wet. I must be obviously flustered, because he presses a last kiss to the side of my hand and covers himself with a towel. “Don’t mind that. It has a mind of its own where you’re involved.”

A choked, half-hysterical giggle bursts out of my throat. “Does it?”

“It does. Started about a year and a half ago. Horrible. I couldn’t even sit next to you in the War Room without getting hard.” He rises to his feet, tucking the towel around his waist: there’s still a very obvious protrusion under the linen, and I avert my eyes.

“Oh,  _ that’s _ why you skipped half the meetings.”

“I mean, really, I went through puberty centuries ago. You’d think things would be done with by now.” He’s smiling, actually smiling: some of the anger, the brittle tension has melted away. “Don’t we have a dinner tonight with those  _ jurda _ merchants from Novyi Zem?”

I’m stunned he remembered. “We do. Get dressed, and if you’re nice and polite at dinner you get a surprise.”

“A surprise?” He looks interested. “Do tell. What—”

I step forward and quickly give him a soft, quick kiss on his left cheek, then his right, and he freezes like a deer, eyes wide, as I make to kiss his mouth, my nose just brushing his, then step back. “You get the last one if you behave yourself. Yes?”

The Darkling’s fingers come trembling up to touch his cheek, as if he can’t believe I just did that of my own free will— and truth be told, I can hardly believe I did it either. “Yes,” he manages, a flush staining his cheeks. “Of course. Yes.”

*** * ***

He’s  _ perfect _ at dinner. He’s polite, he charms the  _ jurda  _ merchant’s wives, he tells jokes, and he makes everything I and Nikolai say sound brilliantly wise. By the end of the night Nikolai’s signing a new tax contract with the whole crowd of merchants, who won’t stop drinking our health, and half their wives are nearly fainting over how wonderful we are, how saintly I am, how wise the King of Ravka is, how handsome and clever the Darkling is.

Once they leave, Nikolai turns around and actually claps the Darkling on the back, laughing aloud. “Saint’s bones, you really had them eating out of the palm of your hand. Well done.”

I smother a laugh as the Darkling’s eyes just about bug out of his head. Nobody’s ever dared to slap him on the back and tell him  _ well done _ before, and he copes by swallowing and stiffly nodding at Nikolai. “Of course. I thought… I thought I would make it up to you for bursting in on… the meeting with you and Alina.”

“Oh, that,” says Nikolai, casually waving his hand. “Not a problem. I’m used to it at this point. For the first year you didn’t even come out of your room, then the second one it was kind of all over the place, wasn’t it? Third year you were more present, but then last year it was like you couldn’t even stand to sit at the table with us. No, Alina’s got this. She’s pretty good at strategy, and—”

“I’m aware,” says the Darkling slightly coldly, “that I’ve been an unsatisfactory player in all this. I… will improve. After all, Alina and I will still be sitting on either side of the Ravkan throne when your great-great-great grandchildren are old, won’t we? I’ll figure it out.”

Nikolai blinks. I cough. “So. It’s late. I think I’ll retire,” he says. “Thank you for your work, though, Morozova.”

The Darkling’s eye twitches. He only allows Nikolai to call him by his long-lost surname: everyone else just calls him  _ my lord _ or  _ sir _ , as they call me  _ my lady _ or  _ Sankta Alina _ . “Of course. Good night.”

The minute Nikolai shuts the door, the Darkling’s at my heels like a hound, whining for approval. “Alina, you promised—”

I yawn, pretending to not know what he’s talking about. “My, I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed—”

He sounds so annoyed that I almost laugh. “ _ Please,  _ Alina—”

“You can come along, of course,” I add, and he’s silent, struck dumb as he tails me out into the hall, to the Little Palace, all the way into our private rooms. His door is ebony, mine is ivory: I open mine and walk in, and he follows me eagerly in as I shut the door. “Right. Where were we? Oh, yes. That’s right. I said I’d give you a present if you behaved.”

Aleksander is frozen where he stands, gazing at me. “Did I— were you—was it—?”

I smile sweetly. “Nikolai was very pleased, wasn’t he?”

A flash of annoyance crosses his handsome face. “Oh, to hell with Nikolai—” 

“You did so well,” I whisper, and his expression relaxes, every line of his body at ease. “So well. Perfect, actually. Come here.”

He walks to me, light glimmering off his black kefta, his black hair. “A-Alina—”

I take him by the neck with both hands and kiss him. It’s not a quick, colorless little peck, either: I’d meant to make it brutal and unforgiving, but the harder I kiss, the more the Darkling trembles under my hands and mouth, his own hands drifting up to hover just above the line of my waist, above the gold-woven kefta I wore to dinner. Touching his skin feels like being drunk: the tipping off balance, the heady rush of power we bring each other, and before I know what I’m doing, light is glowing from my hands, from beneath my eyelids, from my hair. He’s affected similarly: shadows are soaking through the walls, flickering off his body, creeping along the floor as he clutches at my waist with both hands. I can see it over his shoulder as I crush my body closer to him, as I get a full breath. “Aleksander—”

“What— what do you want?” he pants, hot and close into my ear as his hands clutch the back of my kefta. “Anything. I’ll give you anything. Name it.”

I’m trembling already, sopping wet between my thighs: it’s been so long, so long, and I know what I want, but asking feels like giving in, like surrendering.  _ How cruel my thoughts were toward all the girls Mal loved, before, _ I think, closing my eyes. This is a good feeling, not a furtive or shameful one: I should want it— I’m the Sun Queen, but more than that I am a woman. I don’t ask, I command. I can make my own choices, and choose who to share my bed with if I want to share my bed. 

This isn’t surrender at all. It’s coming home. 

“Come,” I say, tugging on his wrist, and he releases me, looking punch-drunk as I tug him to my bed, as I peel myself out of the long gold kefta and discard it. “Yours, too.” The Darkling hurries to obey and strips as I do, and I feel so giddy and jumpy that light keeps blinking and beaming out of my hands. I lie on the bed, and suddenly realize that I have no idea what I’m doing: my only real experience was years ago, and surely the Darkling’s had hundreds of Grisha girls in bed: what will he expect? But he just climbs up carefully, looming over me and staring at my body like he’s never seen a naked woman in his life. “I’m not… a virgin,” I say desperately, hoping he’ll understand that I can’t hope to compare with whatever his past was. “Only one time, um, but—”

“If I wanted to bed a virgin I’d go find one. I want you.” The Darkling swallows. His eyes are trailing all over my body, over the hair falling down around my shoulders, over my bare chest. In the strange mixture of shadow and light our bodies are casting, I can see he’s hard. “Tell me how you like it. Tell me how to make you happy.”

I lie back down, heat rushing my face. “It’s— it’s— here.” I raise my knees and spread them, then beckon to him, and he comes forward, but takes a moment to run his fingers through my cunny, and I shiver, taking his hand. “Right here,” I explain, and guide his hand to where I know he’s supposed to go. His finger slips in, and his expression changes immediately, eyes going sharp and knowing, like he’s found something. 

“Oh,” he says, and rubs at me carefully. I pant a little: that feels nice, but it’s not exactly where I need pressure… and then his fingers slip up, up to the top, and I shriek aloud, clapping a hand over my mouth as my body glows incandescent for a moment. 

“ _ Ah, _ that felt, felt  _ good—” _

“I am going to make you come, do you understand?” asks Aleksander, his voice gone black and urgent. “At least twice before I take you. I want you to scream my name, I want everyone in Os Alta to know that the Starless Saint is fucking their precious, holy Sankta Alina—”

“Please,” I gasp, trembling. “ _ Please—” _ and then his mouth is sealed over my cunny, over the tiny place at the top where he had touched me, and he’s suckling at me, kissing me savagely down there and I can’t help but cry aloud as glowing wisps of light curl off my hands, buried in his hair: it feels  _ so good,  _ achingly wonderful, even though the stag’s horns are digging into my shoulder. I feel like I’ll die if he keeps going, like I’ll die if he stops. My back arches up as I wail, stuffing my hand into my mouth, but the Darkling’s hand tugs my wrist away, and I know what he wants, because he told me. “Aleks—  _ Aleksander, please, please Aleksander—” _

He groans between my legs like a wild animal, and I shake apart. All of me is consuming, on fire, a star being born again: power surges through me untamed, and then it ebbs away, my thighs shaking. I open my eyes, trying to remember how to speak, and I can see that my skin is glowing softly, casting the Darkling’s features into relief. His face, red with heat, is wet from nose to chin, cheek to cheek, and he looks like he’s seen all the Saints at once. “Again,” he whispers, pulling himself up my body and turning me so that his chest is pressed to my back, his arms curled around me, his cheek pressed to mine. “Oh, Alina. What a gift you are.” His hand creeps between my thighs, stroking gently at my puffy, tender cunt. I let out a little whimper: his hand feels huge, and I’m not sure if I have another climax in me. “So hot here. So beautiful. Has nobody ever kissed you there before?”

“No,” I moan, gripping his arms to brace myself as his thumb begins a slow, lazy roll back and forth over where I need it most. Awful, embarrassing sounds come flooding out of my mouth, and I try to stifle it, but the Darkling turns his face into mine, kissing my cheek, my temple. 

“Make all the noise you want.”

_ “Huuuuh,” _ I grunt, shuddering as he finds the perfect spot. “There,  _ there _ don’t stop, don’t— Aleksander—”

He sounds almost as desperate as I feel. “Tell me. Tell me how it feels. Where you feel it. Tell me.” 

Tears are streaking down my face from the force of trying to stay silent, from how good it feels, from everything. “I c-can feel it to m-my, my thighs, everywhere inside me and  _ ohhh if you stop now I’ll kill you Aleksander—” _

_ “Yes,” _ he gasps, and with a shriek I’m shattering apart again, convulsing in his arms as he kisses my throat, my neck. Light is bathing the whole bedroom, from the bedposts to the walls, the windows starkly black against the golden-white sunshine pouring from my skin. He’s so hard that he’s jabbing me in my backside. “Saints,” he says after a moment, “if you come like that when I’m inside you, you’ll burn my cock off.”

My face is wet. “Well, you know,” I croak, exhausted. “How many other men in Os Alta can say they’ve tumbled a woman who really does have the sun shine out of her cunt?”

There’s an awful, frozen silence, and then the Darkling starts laughing so hard that the bed starts shaking. He’s still laughing when he sits up, peeling his sweat-sticky skin off mine, and when I roll over, completely bewildered, but starting to laugh along just because his laughter is so infectious, he’s got tears streaming from his eyes. “The s-sun shining out of y-your—” He hiccups, and then I  _ really _ start losing it at his indignant expression, laughing so hard my belly starts to ache, and redoubling into giggles every time he hiccups again.

“Stop,” I beg, wiping my eyes. “Oh, Saints, I can’t breathe—”

“You think I want to—  _ huc—  _ have the hiccups in  _ bed _ with you?”

“Hold your breath,” I sob, hysterical. “Just h-hold your breath and, and count to ten—” 

Finally, after holding his breath and drinking a glass of water, the hiccups stop, and the Darkling collapses onto my bed on his back, panting for air as I finally stop laughing. “That was not how I wanted our first time to go,” he says, a rueful expression on his face. 

“No? Go ahead and tell me, then. How was it supposed to go?” I lie down next to him on my side, looking at his profile. 

He turns his head and looks at me in the candlelight. “I had… this idea, during the war, of you kneeling before me, after I had finally ripped away all your shelter, all your hiding spots. Torn up the world to find the light… you’d be proud, of course, defiant. But then slowly, you would warm to me. And when I took you to bed, you would…” He shakes his head, his eyes half-shut. “Beneath me. Welcoming me in. All your hair spread out on the bed like a river of starlight. But I know the truth now. You don’t belong beneath anyone.”

I sit up, slightly unnerved. “Do you want me to play at being defiant for you?”

“No.” His gray eyes are almost luminous in the candlelight. “The  _ Sol Koroleva _ doesn’t play at defiance. She rules with steel.” His hand touches the fetter at his wrist. “And I am happy to be her servant when she requires it.”

“Perhaps,” I say, watching his face very carefully, “perhaps I am happy to be the Starless Saint’s servant. When he requires it.”

The Darkling’s face goes almost comically blank. “Are you,” he breathes.

“Later. Put your hands above your head.” I have an idea, and he seems happy to comply: both wrists rest above his head and he watches hungrily as I straddle his bare thighs. His cock, which has softened a little during the interim, is back to full mast, thick and pale and flushed pink at the tip. “I don’t belong beneath anyone. You’re right.” I touch him there, bring him to where he needs to go between my legs, and the Darkling takes in a soft breath, reaching up for my chest— I snatch his hand away and push him down. “No. You stay where  _ you _ belong.”

“Alina—” he says tightly, but he forgets the rest of the sentence: his mouth drops open as I work myself onto him, and I groan. He’s thick, bordering on painful— but I can take him. I can do anything. 

“Don’t you dare touch me,” I gasp, digging my fingers into his skin as I sit down on him fully. “You don’t deserve it.”

His mouth is open, tears glimmering at the corners of his eyes. “I don’t. I don’t. No.”

I begin to cant my hips lightly, as if I’m riding a horse. “You’re a monster.”

“Yes. Yes. I am.” Aleksander’s fingers are clamped around each other, his hands clasped over his head like he’s praying. “Please, Alina.”

I hate how good he feels inside me, how lush and snug his cock feels as I thrust myself up and down on him. The fetter on his wrist clinks softly, and emotion rises inside me: Mal’s death was what irrevocably linked us together for eternity, and perhaps part of him knew that when he asked me to drive the blade into his heart. Candlelight gleams off the brown twist of hair in the Grisha steel, and I throw my head back, trying to hide my tears. Light is streaming off me, but I contain it to a halo around my head so I don’t blind anyone. “I hate you,” I gasp, raking my nails down his chest. He grunts, but he doesn’t move to defend himself. I slap him across the face, and he still doesn’t raise a hand, just lies there on his back and takes everything I give him with wet eyes and a slack mouth, gazing up at me in adoration. “I could cut your throat and you’d let me, wouldn’t you?” I pant. 

“Tear out my heart if you want to,” he moans. “I don’t care. Do anything you want to me. Just don’t… don’t stop.” His hips jerk up toward me, driving himself deeper at a new angle, and I groan aloud, shuddering. “Alina. Please. Please let me… you can stay there, I just have to, to—” and he looks at me, and I understand he’s asking me for permission.

“Yes,” I whimper, and Aleksander’s hands come down, seizing my hips as he begins to pump up into me, his jaw tightening, his pupils dilated black as night. “Oh,  _ s-saints—” _

“Pray all you want,” he gasps, fingers gripping tight enough to bruise as he seizes both my wrists in one hand, my waist in the other. “Pray, Alina. Pray to Sankt Aleksander, the Starless, the Black Heretic, the filthy, the murderer, the monstrous. Perhaps he’ll show you mercy.”

I’m so wet that every movement where our bodies are connected sounds squelchy. “Ohh-h. S-Sankt Aleksander of the Shadows, heartless and black of soul, I pray you h-have, have mercy on me—”

He flips us over in a quick, agile movement, my arms still pinned together, but over my head, and he summons the shadows to bind my hands to the headboard. I don’t care, and after he glances up to make sure I’m not really outraged, he returns to the job of savagely kissing my throat and breasts as he fucks me. “What kind of mercy can a saint like me give?” he growls, biting at my left nipple. I shriek aloud, trembling: the pinch runs through me like fire. “Pray again.”

“Sankt A-Aleksander—” There’s a certain freedom in exchanging this power, in being at someone’s mercy. I know, as surely as if I was told, that if I asked, he would let me go. “Saint of Horrors, saint of darkness, show me mercy in my trials.”

“Tell me of your sins,” he breathes, slowing his strokes to let me speak.

“I have killed,” I gasp, remembering the skiff, the war, Mal, the Grisha and the First Army soldiers who died by my actions, by my hand. “I have been envious of others, I have been cruel, and prideful, and— and foolish, and selfish.”

“Yes, you have,” he whispers, speeding his strokes. Tears are dripping from his eyes. “And you are forgiven. Now—say thank you.”

I can barely talk. “Th-thank you, Sankt Aleksander—”

His breath halts, his face going taut, and then he pulls himself out of me abruptly and comes all over my belly as he sobs for breath, one hand wrapped around his cock and the other tangled in my hair. My shadow-bonds disappear, but the room is momentarily shrouded in dim shadow, and as I collect myself and bring back the light, I can see he’s sweating, trembling above me. “Alina,” he says, sounding very tired and hoarse. “I’ll… get a rag.”

“You look like you might faint. Lie down, I’ll get it.” I wriggle out from under him as he collapses to his side, and stand up gingerly, trying not to make a mess, then go to my bathroom, where I wet a cloth, clean myself up, then come back. The Darkling is lying on his back, chest rising and falling, tears dripping past his temples, in the middle of my bed. I sit down beside him, and he takes the cloth, wiping himself. 

“Thank you,” he whispers in a voice gone torn and exhausted. “I’m… sorry. That… couldn’t have been… good for you.”

I frown. “What? Why not?”

“I got carried away. It’s very... intoxicating, being prayed to.”

Memories of the pilgrims in the caves come to mind, and I cringe. “That’s... not the word I’d use.” 

“You’re much younger than me. You’ll get used to it.” He rolls over on his side, still breathing heavily. “I won’t impose on you for any longer than I have to. Just… give me a moment.”

I shrug, suddenly feeling as if I’d rather not be alone right now. “You can stay if you like. I don’t mind.”

“Oh.” The Darkling closes his eyes heavily. “All right.” I lie down next to him, sweat cooling on my own body, and I think dimly about Mal. Yes, I can see it now: there is some of Mal in the Darkling’s face, faint though it is, especially when he is lying still and quiet, at peace like this. Perhaps, in a way, he did find his way back to me after all. He’s in the fetter that binds Aleksander to me, in the cast of his eyes, the shape of his nose. A lump fills my throat.  _ I can live like this. I can do anything… I might not be able to love the Darkling, but I could learn to love Aleksander Morozova. _

He’s watching me, sleepy-eyed. “I know you’re thinking about him,” he said softly, and there’s no bitterness or jealousy in his voice now. “We have a reception to attend in the morning. Go to sleep, Alinochka.”

Nobody’s ever called me Alinochka:  _ little Alina, dear Alina.  _ I close my eyes and huddle in closer to him, folding my hands under my chin. “If you call me Alinochka, I’ll have to start calling you Sasha.”

“I might learn to like that over another century,” he grumbles, wrapping his arm around me. 

“Aleksander,” I say very quietly, tucked into his warm body. “I did like it. All of it. It was good.”

He’s silent for a moment, silent so long I think he might have fallen asleep, but then his hand comes up to stroke my hair away from my cheek, where the strands glint like silver in the candlelight. “Did you,” he says, and there’s a sort of choked quality to his words, as if he’s struggling with some emotion too big for his voice to contain, before he crushes himself closer, his nose buried in my hair. There’s nothing he needs to say further than that: I understand him. “Good night.”

“Good night,” I whisper, and hide a smile in the shadows, where only he can see.


End file.
